Victorians! discussion

The year is flying by, and it's time to nominate our next book. Please keep some things in mind. Please nominate a book which the group has not read in the last two years. One nomination per author. And please indicate if you would be willing to lead the discussion if your book wins. It's not a requirement to lead the discussion in order to nominate. The nomination thread will be open until March 31.

We've had 15 views but no nominations. Let me clarify something. You do NOT have to be willing to lead the discussion to nominate. You may or may not be asked if you are willing to lead. The decision to do so is yours completely. We just would like to give members the opportunity to be involved. It also gives us broader viewpoints. Hope this puts everyone's mind at ease.

I would like to recommend George Eliot 's Silas Marner. I read it for one of my English literature seminar discussions in university and I absolutely loved it. By the way, I am a first year English literature student.

Here's the link Silas Marner. It's a favorite of mine Ashley.

Quite a few books on my TBR list but I think I'd like to nominate Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu.

Ashley - all the best with your studies. English Literature is such a great subject :0)

It's a beautiful warm spring day here so I'm nominating Elizabeth and Her German Garden. I believe the group read it back in 2012. I just adore The a Enchanted April and have heard that Von Armin's other books are a treat.


If we wind up short on nominations, A House to Let looks interesting. It's a collaborative work by some of our favorites (Collins, Dickens, Gaskell).

Renee wrote: "It's a beautiful warm spring day here so I'm nominating Elizabeth and Her German Garden. I believe the group read it back in 2012. I just adore The a Enchanted April and have heard t..."

Elizabeth and Her German garden is a very special book.

I'm going to suggest a non-fiction book (but one that fully justifies the familiar saying that truth is stranger than fiction). The book is Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley
Travels in West AfricaMary Henrietta Kingsley

I could say enormous amounts about Mary Kingsley, a Victorian spinster who decided to travel to West Africa, but instead I'll whet your appetites with two excepts, one the start of the book, and the second one of many little episodes she relates with classic restrained Victorian self-deprecating humor.

The opening paragraphs:
It was in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled, and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown, I lay about in my mind, as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with them. “Go and learn your tropics,” said Science. Where on earth am I to go? I wondered, for tropics are tropics wherever found, so I got down an atlas and saw that either South America or West Africa must be my destination, for the Malayan region was too far off and too expensive. Then I got Wallace’s Geographical Distribution and after reading that master’s article on the Ethiopian region I hardened my heart and closed with West Africa. I did this the more readily because while I knew nothing of the practical condition of it, I knew a good deal both by tradition and report of South East America, and remembered that Yellow Jack was endemic, and that a certain naturalist, my superior physically and mentally, had come very near getting starved to death in the depressing society of an expedition slowly perishing of want and miscellaneous fevers up the Parana.

My ignorance regarding West Africa was soon removed. And although the vast cavity in my mind that it occupied is not even yet half filled up, there is a great deal of very curious information in its place. I use the word curious advisedly, for I think many seemed to translate my request for practical hints and advice into an advertisement that “Rubbish may be shot here.” This same information is in a state of great confusion still, although I have made heroic efforts to codify it. I find, however, that it can almost all be got in under the following different headings, namely and to wit: -

The dangers of West Africa.
The disagreeables of West Africa.
The diseases of West Africa.
The things you must take to West Africa.
The things you find most handy in West Africa.
The worst possible things you can do in West Africa.

And second, her description of going exploring in the mangrove swamps in a dug-out canoe and getting caught in a tide pool as the tide went out.

This [exploring the mangrove swamps in a dugout canoe] is a fascinating pursuit. But it is a pleasure to be indulged in with caution; for one thing, you are certain to come across crocodiles. Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small dug-out canoe, and that crocodile and his relations are awake - a thing he makes a point of being at flood tide because of fish coming along - and when he has got his foot upon his native heath - that is to say, his tail within holding reach of his native mud - he is highly interesting, and you may not be able to write home about him - and you get frightened on your own behalf; for crocodiles can, and often do, in such places, grab at people in small canoes. I have known of several natives losing their lives in this way; some native villages are approachable from the main river by a short cut, as it were, through the mangrove swamps, and the inhabitants of such villages will now and then go across this way with small canoes instead of by the constant channel to the village, which is almost always winding. In addition to this unpleasantness you are liable - until you realise the danger from experience, or have native advice on the point - to get tide-trapped away in the swamps, the water falling round you when you are away in some deep pool or lagoon, and you find you cannot get back to the main river. Of course if you really want a truly safe investment in Fame, and really care about Posterity, and Posterity’s Science, you will jump over into the black batter-like, stinking slime, cheered by the thought of the terrific sensation you will produce 20,000 years hence, and the care you will be taken of then by your fellow-creatures, in a museum. But if you are a mere ordinary person of a retiring nature, like me, you stop in your lagoon until the tide rises again; most of your attention is directed to dealing with an “at home” to crocodiles and mangrove flies, and with the fearful stench of the slime round you. What little time you have over you will employ in wondering why you came to West Africa, and why, after having reached this point of folly, you need have gone and painted the lily and adorned the rose, by being such a colossal ass as to come fooling about in mangrove swamps.
...
You often hear the utter lifelessness of mangrove-swamps commented on; why I do not know, for they are fairly heavily stocked with fauna, though the species are comparatively few. There are the crocodiles, more of them than any one wants; there are quantities of flies, particularly the big silent mangrove-fly which lays an egg in you under the skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until it feels fit to enter into external life.

I would also like to nominate a book by George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss.

Lisa wrote: "I would also like to nominate a book by George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss."

Since we already have an Eliot, please nominate a different author

Veronique wrote: "Quite a few books on my TBR list but I think I'd like to nominate Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu."

This looks great, I've had to add it to my TBR shelf as well. Is it possible to second nominations here? If yes, I do.

Deborah wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I would also like to nominate a book by George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss."

Since we already have an Eliot, please nominate a different author"
Sure.
How about Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy?

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

I would love to read Travels in West Africa.

The poll results are in and we have a tie!

Vics can look forward to discussing Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy as our May/June selection.

Then, a Victorian field trip abroad to France with The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas.

Lots of fun reading ahead! Thank you for your nominations, votes and participation. We are anticipating many more great discussions with the fabulous Victorians!